Malta International Airport said it registered 80% of pre-pandemic passenger traffic during the whole of 2022.

This shows that the tourism sector is, slowly but surely, recovering. In fact in an editorial penned last December, this newsroom highlighted that the sector is back on track. The pandemic had taken its toll on travel. Malta’s tourism sector was heavily impacted and for a while, people were scared to travel.

The sector is extremely important for Malta, and so much of our economy is based around tourists.

Obviously attracting tourists to Malta is important, but attracting the high number of tourists Malta used to bring in had its own problems. For example, were Maltese able to really enjoy Malta’s beaches or Comino? Were they too packed? Was litter a problem? Do we have just too many hotels? On this latter point, a study by the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association published last year showed that Malta will need to bring in 4.7 million tourists to cater for the planned increase of hotels. This is almost double the 2.8 million tourists Malta received before the Covid-19 pandemic. Even Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo had said that Malta definitely cannot take five million tourists, and said that the government will not be going in the direction of aiming to attract that number of tourists to the country.

One idea that has been spoke about in the past was possibly shifting towards attracting high quality tourism rather than mass tourism, quality over quantity for instance. The pandemic could have been used to start studying such a change. It would mean targeting Malta for higher paying tourists. Of course this could bring with it its own issues, for example one could ask whether restaurant prices would end up rising as a result. But what is for sure is that Malta cannot just move towards attracting more and more tourists. Tourists themselves wouldn’t enjoy being crammed in all of Malta’s beautiful historic sites. As for Malta’s beaches, let's face it, they’re already too full up as it is during the summer season.

So Malta needs to find a way to ensure that the tourism sector thrives without overwhelming the islands with numbers.

The government needs to give more guidance to the sector. It is clear that too many people thought we needed more hotel rooms for instance.

In terms of activities for tourists in the country, well there is plenty. Malta’s historic sites are stunning and, for the most part, are in good condition and very enjoyable to visit. There are some sites that are still dilapidated and could be future attractions, such as Fort Campbell.

As for Malta's restaurants, well there’s been massive improvement over the years and there is so much variety, and a lot of good quality spots to visit. In terms of events, there are many spread throughout each year. Even in winter, for instance, with the Baroque Festival.

Malta has a lot to offer in terms of tourism, but we need to have a discussion about the way forward. Moving towards attracting more and more numbers will cause problems. Malta’s size is what it is.